Printing Credits & Printing Statements

IT Services uses a system of printing credits for self-service printing. This system involves the purchase of printing credits before using the printing facilities in any location. You can purchase printing credits only online via the Manage UM IT Account. The minimum amount that can be purchased as printing credits is €1. Online payment for printing credits can be made by any credit/debit card.

You can check how many printing credits you have left online via the Manage UM IT Account, or from any IT Services workstation:

Double-click Quota Printing Client icon on your desktop.

A dialog box, showing your username and name will be displayed. The amount of money you have left in your printing account is shown under the heading Current balance.

Click Close button.

Printing statements are records of print jobs that you have submitted. These statements enable you to monitor the use of your printing credits. You can generate your printing statement online.

Black & White Printing (A4/A3 Paper)

By default, all IT Services workstations are set to print on the nearest black & white laser printer. Therefore, all your printing requests will automatically be directed to the nearest printer.

Note that A3 printing is available only at: IT Services Building, Faculty for the Built Environment Lab A, University Library First Floor Open Access Area and the Faculty of Health Sciences Lab (Mater Dei Hospital). A3 printing over Wi-Fi on these printers is also possible.

Duplex Printing (A4 Paper)

Duplex printing is printing on both sides of the paper. Double-sided printing saves on paper and is cheaper than single-sided printing.

Duplex printing is suitable for printing multi-page documents. By default, all IT Services workstations are set to single-sided printing. Follow these MS Office 2016 instructions to print on both sides of an A4 page:

Click File tab to display the Backstage view.

Click Print tab.

Under Settings, change the option Print One Sided to either Print on Both Sides Flip pages on long edge or Print on Both Sides Flip pages on short edge as appropriate.

Click Print button to print the document.

Duplex printing over Wi-Fi is also possible.

Note that you can also print multiple pages on a single side of an A4 page. Refer to the Printing Tips section for information about multiple page printing.

Colour Printing (A4/A3 Paper)

Click Print tab. The Print field will show the name of the nearest B&W printer.

In the Printer field, select the name of the printer to use e.g. if you are in IT Services Open Access Hall 001 select: Colour IT Services Open Access 001 A4&A3.

Click Print button to print the document.

Note that:

The colour laser printer may take some time to output your printouts. It is important to set the printer back to a B&W printer if you intend to print in black & white during the same session.

A3 printing is available only at: IT Services Building, Faculty for the Built Environment Lab A, University Library First Floor Open Access Area and Faculty of Health Sciences Lab (Mater Dei Hospital). A3 printing over Wi-Fi on these printers is also possible.

Wide Format Printing

Wide format printing is available at the Faculty for the Built Environment Building (PC Lab) and at the IT Services Building Printing Room. Users are requested to book a time slot online. Users will need to purchase printing credits online to make use of this service.

Managing Colour Documents

Colour documents occupy more space in terms of memory compared to black and white documents. Sometimes a colour document might be of too large a size to mail. This can make it difficult to transfer colour documents to IT Services computers for printing.

Colour documents are best stored either on a USB memory stick or on a CD-R/DVD disk. You can also use a compression utility (such as .zip or .rar) to reduce the file size of your colour document. A file compression utility can be downloaded from IT Services downloads page.

Printing Tips

Since all printing must be paid for, you will want to ensure that no print job is wasted. Here are some tips to help you with this.

Check your work carefully before printing. Note that documents produced on one printer may appear slightly different when an alternative printer is chosen. This means that documents prepared on your home computer might be displayed differently on IT Services workstations.

Note that the quality of printed coloured images may be slightly different from what is displayed on the computer screen. This is because a printer is unable to produce as many pure colours as a monitor. Print only one page and check whether the colours are to your satisfaction or not.

Print only those pages which you really need. If you are revising a file, print the amended pages only, not the whole file or document. All programs allow you to specify which pages to print. If you don't know how, look up printing in the program help system.

Check your print settings carefully before you send a print job. For example, if you have previously changed a setting to print 3 copies of a document instead of 1, make sure you change the print setting back to 1 before you print again.

Make sure that you know which printer your job will be printed on. This is especially so if you will be using different printers during the same session. Remember that printing on the colour laser is significantly more expensive than standard black and white laser printing.

Consider printing multiple pages on a single side of an A4 page. This is particularly suitable for multi-page documents specifically printed for reading purposes. This conserves paper and is cheaper than standard printing. In MS Office 2016 you can print multiple pages as follows:

Click File tab.

Click Print tab.

The last field below Settings displays the default option 1 Page Per Sheet. Choose the number of pages to print on a single side of an A4 paper.

Click Print button to print the document.

Please collect your printouts promptly. If you find other users' output in the printer, please keep it together and leave it in the output tray. Uncollected output is placed in a box and disposed of at the end of the day.